Salvatore Ferragamo / Pre-Fall 2012

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As a season, it seems pre-fall happens without boundaries, almost anytime, anywhere, from November to January, in New York, Paris, London, Florence, you name it. This week, it popped up in Milan Central Train Station—the monumental piece of architecture built by Mussolini—thanks to Salvatore Ferragamo and its creative director Massimiliano Giornetti. As it turned out, Giornetti had chosen an incredible setting for a collection that played to all the innate strengths of Italian classicism—a throwback to the Milanese haute bourgeoisie conservative sartorial values so well-outlined in I Am Love, the movie starring Tilda Swinton. Immaculately groomed young women were perched stiffly, legs demurely crossed, in the lavishly pompous, marble-columned, parquet-floored private waiting room built in the 1920s for the Italian royal family. “I liked the idea that they are arriving from a journey, or waiting for one,” said Giornetti, as he conducted spectators around a room which had been furnished with period banquettes and sixties coffee tables from a vintage store in Florence. “In my mind, it’s an idea about strict and rational dressing, but with a touch of eccentricity, very Milanese bourgeoisie, with the skirts slightly above the knee in that sixties way.”

Giornetti had it right from the period point of view—from the 5.5 cm. pointy kitten-heeled pumps and slingbacks, up through the fishnet tights, pleated suede A-line skirts, to the matching blazers, buttoned-up shirts, and felt wide-brimmed hats. The effect of that slightly snobbish, chilly kind of put-together luxe only Italians can achieve came across in the quality of all the details: skirt pleats picked out in strips of python, leather-bound edges on brushed pony-skin coats, the way the diamond-pattern on an argyle sweater was made from a patchwork of python, suede, and cashmere. If models can be credited with acting while sitting down they did it well, assuming the distant gaze of aristocratically entitled girls, hands crossed on knees in glacé-leather gloves, their suede beauty-box bags at their sides, ready for their journey to—where? Swiss finishing school, maybe.

Fashion-wise, Giornetti’s living tableau had all the right colors of the moment—burgundy, deep purple, loden green, and a play on all-over print in the diagonal checks matched in, say, a cape and pants, or a set of shorts, shirt, and tie. In accessories, belt buckles as well as bags came with the famous Ferragamo horseshoe-shaped Giancino lock (perhaps most directionally on the new, flat envelope-shaped document case, a growing trend in pre-fall). Still, as picture-perfect as the presentation was, Giornetti concluded his introduction to the season with the observation that it’s really there to be broken down. “I don’t believe in uniforms. What you see here are mostly daywear separates. I think the joy of dressing is that every day you’re getting up and reinventing yourself.”